28th Annual Competition Conference

6 Sep - 7 Sep 2024

Session information

Session four: Watch out, our robots may be colluding: algorithmic price-fixing

Friday 6 September (1700 - 1815)

Description

Fast-developing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have been attracting increasing attention in recent years. The use of pricing algorithms to facilitate collusion is one of the hottest topics in the area of antitrust. Is it a collusive agreement when competitors knowingly use the same AI technology to monitor and adjust prices? Even where the algorithm only recommends rather than determines prices and actual prices can differ? In a recent US residential housing case, the US agencies say yes and yes. And in a recent US class action, it is claimed that hotels collude on prices through a common software program. Other competition authorities are considering these and other AI-related issues as they apply across a range of businesses. Some scholars have even posited whether pricing algorithms may ‘autonomously’ learn to collude. The session will examine the latest thinking in this largely undeveloped area of antitrust.

Session / Workshop Chair(s)

Randal Hughes Bennett Jones LLP, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Competition Agency Liaison Officer, Antitrust Section
Tsuyoshi Ikeda Ikeda & Someya, Tokyo, Japan; Membership Officer, Antitrust Section

Speakers

Svend Albaek European University Institute, Florence, Italy
Maria Jaspers European Commission, Brussels, Belgium
Shweta Shroff Chopra Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co, New Delhi, Delhi, India
Daniel Swanson Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Los Angeles, California, USA